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Dear Quicken, Meet The Free Mac, Windows, Linux App That Does What You Do

Some may argue that Apple made a huge mistake by licensing elements of Mac OS to Microsoft which paved the way for a look-a-like operating system to dominate the PC world.

It wasn’t that many years ago when Intuit, the publisher of money management app Quicken for both Mac and Windows, decided the Mac was kaput, finished, kicked the bucket, and no longer worth the company’s time or investments.

A funny thing happened along the way to Apple’s demise, and Quicken’s decision to cut and run from the Mac. Today, the Mac dominates PC profits, and seems to be the PC of choice among those who still have money.

While Quicken was closeted by Intuit, clever Mac developers filled the vacuum with the likes of free budget apps, including an old favorite– Buddi, a cross platform personal finance and budget app for Mac, Windows, and various versions of Linux and Unix.

While Buddi is free it comes with a couple of caveats.

The first is that it’s basic. Create accounts, add transactions, setup and manage a budget. If you want Buddi to manage a portfolio of stocks, monitor your holdings, interface with your bank, then move on to iBank. It’s far more capable and priced accordingly.

What Buddi does best is track your money. Checking accounts, savings accounts, credit card accounts– all kept neat and tidy, fully cross platform, easy to backup, mostly simple to setup and use. Buddi can generate reports and put up some colorful charts and graphs. And, well, that’s about it

The second caveat is that Buddi is a Java app. That means you’ll need to download and install the latest Java update. Java, as you may have read elsewhere, is not the most secure platform. Instead of the original Java mantra of ‘Write once, run anywhere‘ it has become more like ‘Write once, debug everywhere.’

If you don’t mind Java on your Mac, and you’re on a tight budget, Buddi can help you manage the budget, watch your money, and do it for far less than Intuit’s aging Quicken.